Full-Wave Analysis of $N$-Way Power Dividers by Eigenvalue Decomposition

An (
N
+1)-port junction endowed with complete rotational symmetry with respect to the first
N
ports is analyzed by a partial spectral decomposition of its
S
-matrix. This approach produces N/2 one-port boundary value problems, as well as a single two-port problem, which can be easily solved by means of standard full-wave simulators. The practical example of a coaxially fed 36-way power divider was easily analyzed by this method, and the results were nearly indistinguishable from those obtained by analyzing the device as a whole.